Tag: fraud

Denver: Former law enforcement officer accused of absconding with refugee charity funds

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The refugee resettlement contractor has apparently, according to news reports, been shuttered for a couple of years, but now its former Board Chairman, a former deputy sheriff, has been indicted for taking money from the publicly-funded charity.

According to the Patch:

DENVER, CO — A fired former division head of the Denver Sheriff’s Office and a former president of the state Fraternal Order of Police was indicted by a grand jury in Denver earlier this month for allegedly pocking $50,000 from an Aurora refugee charity.

Franklin Gale, 55, of Denver was indicted by a Denver grand jury in connection with the alleged diversion for his own use of multiple checks paid to Ecumenical Refugee And Immigration Services, a non-active refugee resettlement agency that closed under a cloud in 2015 after another embezzlement scandal.

Gale is charged with money laundering, theft, attempting to influence a public servant forgery and vehicle theft. The indictment was handed down Oct. 3 and Gale turned himself in to the Longmont Police, a statement from the Denver District Attorney’s Office said.

[….]

Gale was serving as a non-compensated board member of ERIS in 2015 when the charity was closed down following a 2014 criminal investigation by the Aurora Police Department that resulted in embezzlement and theft charges against two staffers, Genevieve Marie Cruz and Adam Cole Shryock.

 

Charity navigator CO refugees
See that Charity Navigator has given ERIS its High Concern Advisory rating.

 

According to the indictment, Gale was a friend of Cruz, who was brought onto the board initially as a consultant. He ended up the president of the board as the organization closed down.

ERIS had received public funds to assist with refugee resettlement through the CARES branch of the Colorado Department of Law Human Services. Those funds were revoked after Cruz and her colleague were charged.

In May of 2015, Gale was elected president of the board of directors and the organization closed its doors.

When Cruz and Shyrock pleaded guilty in 2016, they were ordered by the court to pay $50,000 in restitution to the agency, the indictment said.

According to the grand jury indictment, about a dozen checks were sent to the defunct agency in care of Frank Gale at his Denver home address.

The indictment alleges that between November 2015 and April 2017, Gale wrote $48,668 in checks to himself from the ERIS account and deposited them into an account he established for his minor son. Gale would then make bank account cash withdrawals, ATM withdrawals, and/or transfer the funds from his son’s account to other accounts under his control, thus laundering the money, the indictment alleges. The actions ultimately added up to the theft of $50,000, the DA’s office said in a statement.

Gale is also accused of forging the name and signature of the former board director on a motor vehicle title for a truck owned by ERIS and then getting a new motor vehicle title in his own name.

More here.

Gale is expected to appear in court on Monday, see here.

I was surprised to find that the website is still up for ERIS here.

And, I learned from that site that it was a subcontractor working for two of the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors:

Ecumenical Refugee and Immigration Services (ERIS) helps to resettle refugees and asylees who are legally in Colorado (by Church World Service and Episcopal Migration Ministries), by providing them assistance with educational needs, family and social services, medical attention, employment, and cultural orientation.

There needs to be much more scrutiny than there is at the present time of non-profits benefiting from state and federal tax dollars.

Former State Department employee: virtually impossible to vet refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Adding a knowledgeable and experienced voice to the on-going debate in the White House on possible refugee admission numbers for FY19, don’t miss Mary Doetsch writing at the Daily Caller yesterday on the question of security screening of refugees.

 

FAILURES IN REFUGEE VETTING PROCESS LEAD TO CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IN OUR HOMETOWNS

 

As refugee contractors — who make money on every refugee they resettle — break into hyper-lobbying mode to demand that the Trump administration resettle “at least 75,000” in the coming fiscal year, the recent lies and criminal activity of five refugees who were resettled via the fraud-laden U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) are, once again, being willfully ignored.

we are all america tweet
This is part of the refugee industry’s extensive and well-funded media campaign to pressure the President in to agreeing to admit 75,000 refugees beginning in five weeks.

Four improperly deemed “refugees” were charged with murder, lying to gain admission into the United States, and immigration benefits, among other crimes, while a fifth was charged with attempted murder.

In each case, the approved refugee likely would have been subjected to the much-touted, though often feckless, “enhanced vetting” that advocates say both ensures the legitimacy of the refugee claim and protects U.S. security interests. Nonetheless, at least four of the five successfully lied their way through what advocates claim is the “most vetted” interviewing process, duping refugee officers with their fabricated stories.

Sadly, these cases are simply the tip of the iceberg. As a Refugee Coordinator who covered the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Europe and Cuba for eight years, I had first-hand knowledge of country conditions and political realities, and I saw and read hundreds of fraudulent refugee claims.

Disturbingly, the majority of refugee claims are ultimately approved, despite serious questions regarding the applicants’ reliability and truthfulness, often based solely on their testimony.

[….]

Despite claims that refugees are subject to the most intense scrutiny prior to resettlement into the United States, the bottom line is that in countries with ill-functioning governments or where no reliable data exists, it is virtually impossible to vet refugee candidates.

Read it all here.

Moratorium!

And, if you haven’t told the White House what you think about how many refugees could be admitted to the US beginning October first, do it now.

I’m saying zero until the refugee program is completely reformed by Congress!

Ethiopian refugee arrested in Virginia, government says he lied to become US citizen

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here we go again!  It sure looks like the Trump Justice Department has launched a campaign to ferret out those who fraudulently got in to the US claiming they were refugees. (Reminds me to start watching DOJ press announcements on a daily basis!)

Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart has penned another post within days of telling us about the Iraqi refugee arrested in California.  In that case the government alleges that the Iraqi was a member of ISIS when he arrived here from Turkey.

Here we learn that the DOJ is alleging that this refugee was not abused and persecuted, but was himself a human rights abuser.

Report: Ethiopian Refugee Arrested for Fraudulent U.S. Citizenship, Was Interrogator During ‘Red Terror’

 

Special agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested an Ethiopian refugee after he was indicted on Tuesday on felony charges of allegedly fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship.

 

The red terror
See wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qey_Shibir     Image is from 2016 film:  https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-29-new-ethiopian-film-addresses-red-terror-campaign-of-mengistu-reign

 

 

“Mergia Negussie Habteyes, 58, is charged in an indictment, which was returned by a grand jury for the Eastern District of Virginia on Aug. 14, alleging that Negussie told a series of lies to U.S. immigration authorities in the course of obtaining authority to enter the United States as a refugee, subsequently obtaining lawful permanent-resident status, and ultimately obtaining U.S. citizenship,” The Department of Justice(DOJ) said in a statement released on Friday:

Specifically, the indictment asserts that, when he applied for naturalization in the United States, Negussie falsely stated that he never persecuted persons because of their political opinion, and he failed to disclose that he had committed a crime or offense for which he was not arrested.

In fact, according to the indictment, Negussie served as a civilian interrogator in the Higher 3 prison in Ethiopia in the late 1970s, during a period known as the Red Terror. In that role, Negussie is alleged to have participated in the persecution, through brutality, of individuals imprisoned because of their political opinion.

Additionally, Negussie falsely stated that he never gave false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immigration benefit and that he never lied to U.S. immigration authorities to gain entry or admission into the United States and to obtain immigration benefits.

News of the arrest of the Ethiopian refugee in Virginia on felony charges follows the announcement this week of the arrest of an Iraqi refugee and alleged Islamic State murderer in California, who was charged with lying on his refugee application and now faces an extradition hearing based on a warrant for the 2014 of an Iraqi police officer issued by an Iraqi judge in May of this year.

More here.

The Washington Post has a short article yesterday, but doesn’t give us any additional information.

I want to know exactly when he was admitted to the US as a refugee.  I would also love to know which resettlement agency placed him, but that is something we rarely ever hear.  An exception is the recent case of the Iraqi who shot a police officer in Colorado where we learned it was Lutheran Social Services that was his caretaker upon arrival.

By the way, over the years we have brought in a huge number of refugees from Ethiopia and even one of the nine contractors is the Ethiopian Community Development Council  (head quarters located in Virginia).

This post is filed in my ‘Crimes’ category along with 2,000 plus other stories involving refugee and immigrant crimes here and around the world.

 

DOJ website lists cases of immigration fraud, check it out!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Reader Cathy alerted me to this page at the US Department of Justice website.  I had never seen it before, but I will be checking it regularly from now on.

Go to the Department of Justice, here.  Then in the search window type ‘immigration fraud‘ and up pops some juicy bits of news you probably never saw in the media.

Here is a screenshot of a small portion of the page this morning:

 

Screenshot (573)

 

 

By they way, I have a category for ‘where to find information’ with 638 posts in it.  You might want to see what is available there when you have a few minutes.

This post will be archived there.

Corruption and bribery alleged in UN refugee office in Sudan

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, the allegations are coming from a humanitarian publication under the UN umbrella.
Why do you care?
Because the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is the first stop for most refugees coming to your towns. (We took 53 from Sudan in the last 7 months). 
This is just more evidence that the US State Department should be cutting the umbilical cord to the United Nations Refugee Program. If we are going to be taking refugees from third world hell holes we should be doing the choosing and the processing without UN ‘help.’
(Don’t miss the chart below showing the UN as the first step in the screening of refugees to be your new neighbors!)
You know this is going on everywhere!
 
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